July 1945
Mother finds son through a magazine photo 1/n He missed her so much at the camp. Back in Holland she was not there either. Now Sieg Maandag can embrace mother Keetje again, along with his sister Henneke. How they found each other again has everything to do with a photo. 2/n It's a photo that shocked many Americans. A little boy walking past corpses in Bergen-Belsen, his gaze averted. That boy was 7-year-old Sieg Maandag from Amsterdam.
The photo was taken shortly after the liberation of the camp. George Rodger made a photo report of the
Aug 22 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🧵 1/n Robert Wagemans
was born in 1937 in Mannheim, Germany. His mother, Lotte, was arrested and briefly imprisoned for her activities as a Jehovah’s Witness. She gave birth shortly after her release. Due to the stress of imprisonment and insufficient medical care, 2/n Robert’s hip was injured during delivery, resulting in a permanent disability.
Robert was classified as disabled under the T4 Program. In 1943, Lotte was ordered to bring five-year old Robert for a medical examination to confirm his condition.
Aug 22 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Theresienstadt - the Bialystok children 1/n On August 21, 1943, at the time of the annihilation of the Bialystok ghetto and the uprising there, the Gestapo demanded that 1,200 children ages 6-12 be gathered in order to transfer them, so they said, in an exchange deal to Palestine 2/n The transport of 1,200 children and 20 adults, traveled for 3 days by train and arrived on the 24 or 25 August at Theresienstadt.
At Theresienstadt the children were placed in a special camp Crete, which had been built outside the citadel.
Aug 19 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The #Righteous during World War Two
🧵 1/n
Rome: The Doctors At Fatebenefratelli Hospital Who Invented “Syndrome K”
In October 1943, a terrifying new disease suddenly appeared in Nazi-occupied Rome. Italian doctors claimed that the so-called “Syndrome K” was highly 2/n contagious and dangerous. But, in fact, it was all a ruse. A trio of doctors — Vittorio Sacerdoti, Giovanni Borromeo, and Adriano Ossicini — invented the disease to save Jews in Italy. When Jews came to Fatebenefratelli Hospital seeking a safe haven from the Nazis,
Aug 17 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
@AuschwitzMuseum 1/n Joseph Hakker a confectioner from Antwerp who wrote an elaborate testimony about his experiences detailed the registration procedure as follows:
@AuschwitzMuseum 2/n “The registration office was under the command of the lawyer Dr Erich Krull. We sat on a bench where we received a number … A voice gave the order to put everything we had into a hat and said we could not keep anything. The walls were full of posters prompting us to hand in
Aug 17 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 17 August 1944:
Drancy camp near Paris is liberated 1/n
While the Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and the fighting for the liberation of French territory raged, Aloïs Brunner, the Nazi commander of the Drancy camp continued the “hunting of Jews”. 2/n About a thousand internees arrived at the Drancy camp in June, another thousand in July, including 250 children rounded up between 21 and 25 July 1944 in UGIF children's homes in the Paris region.
Aug 17 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
October 28, 1944
After the Red Cross visit of Theresienstadt, the Nazis decided to shoot a propaganda film. 1/n After the filming of “The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews,” in Theresienstadt, Director Kurt Gerron an all who participated in the filming were murdered in Auschwitz 2/n Kurt Gerron,*May 11, 1897, was a well-known artist. After his professional ban in Germany, he fled, was caught in Holland, and deported to Theresienstadt.
There, he was ordered to direct a propaganda film.
Aug 16 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
The #Righteous amongst us
Otto Weidt, The Blind Schindler 1/n Otto Weidt was born in 1883. During and after WWI, he was exonerated for health reasons. He was a convinced pacifist, and he suffered from a sight disease. He had to leave his job as an upholsterer, and he created a 2/n company with blind workers that produced brushes and brooms for the army. His employees were almost all blind, deaf or mute Jews whom a Jewish nursing home near Berlin. When the deportations began, fearless, he argued with Gestapo officials to save every single Jewish worker.
Aug 15 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
The #Righteous amongst us
Suzanne Spaak
'Something must be done' 1/n Suzanne Spaak lived in Paris with her husband Claude, a filmmaker, and their two children. Spaak, as the daughter of a famous Belgian banker, and sister-in-law of the Belgian foreign minister, was accustomed to 2/n a high standard of living. However, she found the German occupation of France intolerable and decided to join the Resistance.
In 1942, Spaak offered her services to the underground National Movement Against Racism. When she joined them, Spaak said, “Tell me what to do...
Aug 13 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The #Righteous during World War II
Ona Šimaitė (6 Jan 1894 – 17 Jan 1970) 1/n Ona Šimaitė was a Lithuanian librarian who saved Jews, including many children, during the German occupation, and preserved literary works from the Vilna ghetto, before being arrested by the Gestapo. 2/n Born in Lithuania, but educated in Russia, in 1940, Christian woman named Ona Šimaitė moved to Vilnius (Vilna), long known as “the Jerusalem of Lithuania.” There, Ona took a job as librarian at Vilnius University just as the Lithuanian people faced the looming German invasion
Aug 13 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Leo Haas
was born into a Jewish family in Opava, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) on 15 April 1901. He studied in Karlsruhe and Berlin between 1919 and 1922, influenced by German expressionism and the works of Goya and Lautrec. 1/n 2/n From 1925–38 he worked in Vienna and Opava as an illustrator, painter and book-designer. He was arrested in 1939 for helping German communists to cross the border illegally and sent into forced labour.
'Children on the way to Auschwitz'
Aug 12 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Survival in Auschwitz - SHOES
Primo Levi
1/n “Shoes function as a minor symbol of one’s status in the camp’s social hierarchy. Jewish prisoners are only allowed wooden clogs, which are painful and cause dangerous sores that can lead to lethal infections.
This reflects both the 2/n prisoners’ low station and the general disregard with which the Germans treat them. Contrarily, German officials and even German prisoners are given leather shoes, which are far more comfortable and less likely to cause dangerous infections. Near the end of the story, as the
Aug 12 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
Mira Rosenblatt, a Jewish Holocaust survivor. 1/n Mira Rosenblatt’s childhood was like any other Jewish child. She was raised by a Polish mother and father, and had three brothers and two sisters. 2/n On September 1st, 1939, the Holocaust broke out in Europe. On September 4th, the Germans occupied Sosnowiec.
On August 12, 1942, all the Jews of Sosnowiec were ordered to report to the Stadium and Mira was ‘selected’ to be deported to a work camp.
Aug 11 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The #Righteous amongst us
1/n FATHER BRUNO poses with five Jewish children he is hosting. Pictured from left: Henri Zwierszewski, George Michaelson, Father Bruno, Willy Michaelson, Henri Fuks and Willy Sandominski.
Date: 1942 - 1944. Location: Belgium 2/n Father Bruno Reynders (1903-1981), the savior of more than three hundred Jewish children under the Nazi occupation, was born in Ixelles. Back on the perilous route of this priest in whom Israel recognized a “Righteous of the Nations”. First there is the campaign of May 1940
Aug 10 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The Boat is Full 1/n Between 10,000 and 24,000 Jewish civilian refugees were refused entry to Switzerland.
These refugees were refused entry on the asserted claim of dwindling supplies. Of those refused entry, a Swiss government representative said, "Our little lifeboat is full." 2/n At the beginning of the war Switzerland had a Jewish population of between 18,000 and 28,000 and a total population of about 4 million. By the end of the war, there were over 115,000 refuge-seeking people of all categories in Switzerland, representing the maximum number of
Aug 10 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
"Le Camp des Milles" - France 1/n
The French authorities rushed to transform Les Milles, a former tile factory in the south of France located between Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, into an enemy alien internment camp following the declaration of war on Germany. Many of those 2/n interned in Les Milles in the months leading up to the fall of the French Third Republic were in fact refugees who had fled the Third Reich due to Nazi anti-intellectual and antisemitic politics. A vibrant intellectual and artistic community formed in the camp. Several famous
Aug 9 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Elisabeth Guttenberger
An Auschwitz Sinti witness
1/n Elisabeth grew up in a Stuttgart Sinti family. She and her three siblings had an idyllic childhood. Their father sold string instruments and antiques, and the family moved to Munich in 1936. The “Nuremberg Race Laws” 2/n drastically changed the family’s situation. Elisabeth was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau along with her family in March of 1943. After six months she was put to work in the prisoner administration office, where she had to keep the “main book,” a register of all men imprisoned
Aug 9 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
“When I perish, do not allow my pictures to die with me.
Show them to the people.”
Felix Nussbaum
(11 December 1904 – 9 August 1944)
🧵 1/n
When Belgium and the Netherlands were occupied in May 1940, Felix was arrested in his apartment and, like 2/n all other aliens, taken to the Saint Cyprien camp in southern France. His interment there was a personal watershed; then Felix comprehended the true extent of mortal peril as a Jew under Nazi rule. He expressed this epiphany in his important work, The Camp Synagogue
Aug 7 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
On 7 August 1942, Esther Frenkel (Horonczyk) threw a letter from the deportation train.
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"I am on the train. I do not know what has become of my Richard... Save my child, my innocent baby!"
They were separated at Pithiviers & murdered in Auschwitz. 1/n 2/n Born in 1913 in Krzepice, Poland, Esther Horonczyk was the youngest of five children of Rywka-Fraidla Horonczyk née Heller and Shimon Horonczyk. After Rywka's death in Poland, Esther emigrated to France with the rest of the family in 1926. In Paris, Esther
Aug 3 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Hans "John" Butzke's teddy bear was used to smuggle valuables out of Vienna 1/n This particular 'Steiff' teddy was owned by Hans Butzke, a boy born in Vienna in 1929 to parents Netty, a nurse, and Julius, an accountant. 2/n After the German takeover of Austria in 1938, it became evident that the situation was getting progressively worse, so the family decided to flee.
In 1940 the family was able to get on a train to Amsterdam, starting their journey to Panama, while
Jul 31 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Transport XXI from Dossin Barracks, Belgium to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 31 July, 1942 1/n On July 31, 1943 Giza, born Gitel Wachspress in Tarnow, together with her lover David Weissblum, a furrier, was put on transport XXI to Auschwitz.
The life of this courageous couple became a 2/n symbol of resistance and courage during dark times. After their flight to Belgium in July 1939, they later had to flee to France during the German invasion. When they returned to Antwerp in 1940, they discovered that their house had been looted.